I used to have some Pace forks that told me not to use the lockout on anything bumpy even when climbing because it risked blowing the seals.

Have my eye on some Rockshox Rebas that have lockout for my currently rigid Salsa and wondering if they say the same thing? I love my rigid fork all the time except for the bumpy descents, so I’m wondering if they’d be ok to ride like that – locked out all the time except when needed.

My Rebas allow a tiny bit of travel when locked out. Having stupidly ridden down some bumpy Dales descents locked out with no ill-effects apart from sore wrists, you shouldn’t do any damage.

TBH I don’t find them particularly quicker locked out for off-road climbing and on the flats, even at 120mm.

If you’re after a full lockout most modern forks will disappoint you. They all seem to ramp up the compression damping but never enough to completely kill movement.

As reported above with my Rebas , I like them for that reason. My Tk silver 30’s however have been a joke since new.

Love the lockout on my Monarch RL rear shock also BTW.

I think they have a ‘blowout’ function so that if you over do it at a certain presure they will go past the lockout as it were to prevent damage.

RLT is rebound, lockout & THRESHOLD – the threshold is the gold dial on top that adjusts the force required for the fork lockout to blow off and open up the internals to function as suspension.

TBH I don’t find them particularly quicker locked out for off-road climbing and on the flats

It’s not speed I’m after, it’s stability and feel. I’d forgotten how nice it was to honk properly out of the saddle, and how I’d stopped doing it with sus forks.

Thinking about it I had the motion control thing on my Revs, I set that up to be very stiff but didn’t really use it much. They can’t be fully locked out? Does the blow-off disengage the ‘lockout’ completely, or just a blowoff and it returns to being semi-locked?

The blow off only temporarily opens the damping circuit upon taking an impact big enough to overcome the threshold. Once the fork has stabilised after the impact the fork will be (semi)locked out again.